Her eyes were still twinkling, but Anne could see some wistfulness in their depths. Susanna was twenty-two years old and exquisitely lovely, with her small stature and auburn hair and green eyes. She had come to the school at the age of twelve as a charity girl, after failing to find employment in London as a lady’s maid by pretending to be older. Six years later she had stayed at the school after Miss Martin offered her a position on her staff, and she had accomplished the transition from pupil to teacher remarkably well. Anne did not know much about her life before the age of twelve, but she did know that Susanna was all alone in the world. She had never had any beaux even though she turned male heads whenever she stepped out on the street. Sunny-natured though she was, there was always an air of melancholy about her that only a close friend would sense.

“Are you quite, quite sure, Anne,” Claudia asked, “that you would not rather stay here for the summer? But no, of course you would not. And you are quite right. David does need the companionship of other children, especially boys, and this is a very good opportunity for him. Go then with my blessing-not that you need it-and try to steer as clear of adult Bedwyns as you would the plague.”

“I solemnly swear,” Anne said, raising her right hand. “Though it is just as likely to be the other way around.”

It was not that he felt intimidated, but Sydnam Butler was nevertheless moving out of Glandwr House into the thatched, whitewashed cottage that lay in a small clearing among the trees not far from the sea cliffs on one side and the park gates and driveway on the other.

As steward of the estate for the past five years, Sydnam had lived in his own spacious apartments in the main house, and he had always continued to live there even when the owner, the Duke of Bewcastle, was in residence.